With his pet lizards walked on a lead, long leather coat, slicked-back hair and sunglasses that he wore regardless of the weather, Stephen Griffiths was regarded as a harmless oddball by his neighbours.

The 40-year-old, who lived alone in a converted stone mill in the heart of Bradford's red light district and was nicknamed the Lizard Man or Penfold, was considered friendly but eccentric by those who shared the block of flats.

However, on a Monday morning in May this year the caretaker at Holmfield Court was checking CCTV footage from the weekend and saw the missing street worker Suzanne Blamires, 36, terrified, running from Griffiths's flat before being knocked unconscious.

Griffiths disappeared from view, returning moments later carrying a crossbow. He lined up the weapon and shot the unconscious woman with a bolt through her head before dragging her lifeless body down a corridor.

The caretaker phoned 999 – but not before calling the newsdesk of the Sun newspaper and selling the story. Griffiths was arrested a few hours later, after he had deposited Blamires's body in the nearby river Aire. From that moment he has displayed no emotion.

In recent months, he has refused to speak to his legal team and has made four suicide attempts while on remand, apparently eager to be moved to the secure Rampton psychiatric hospital in Nottinghamshire from the harsh regime of Wakefield prison, where the Soham killer, Ian Huntley, was once on remand. He began refusing food at the end of November.

Griffiths, who has a psychology degree, had spent the last six years on a part-time PhD course at Bradford University, comparing 19th-century and modern murder techniques. A website he set up, called The Skeleton and The Jaguar, was full of pictures of crossbows. The site also contained photographs of 50 serial killers.

He enjoyed the power he had over prostitutes, but what turned Griffiths into the killer of Blamires, Shelley Armitage, 31, who vanished a month earlier, and Susan Rushworth, 43, who had not been seen for almost a year?

His parents split up when he was a young boy and he lived in Wakefield with his mother, Moira, and his brother and sister. His 61-year-old father, also called Stephen, had not seen his son for 10 years when he was arrested for murder and said he did not initially recognise him in a photograph.

Moira, a receptionist, had scrimped and saved to afford the £9,000-a-year fees to send her son to the Queen Elizabeth grammar school – the alma mater of the acid bath serial killer John George Haigh, who was awarded a scholarship in the early 20th century. All pupils would have been told of the grisly link with Haigh, who was hanged at the age of 40 in Wandsworth prison. That is likely to have made an impression on the young Griffiths, according to David Wilson, a professor of criminology who has examined the case.

On social networking sites, Griffiths developed an outlandish persona, portraying himself as "Ven Pariah" and a "misanthrope who brought hate into heaven". He appeared in a photograph naked from the chest upward and quoted the Bible, Ezekiel 25:17: "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides." The quote acquired notoriety when it was used in a gory execution scene in Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction.

Griffiths declared on MySpace: "Humanity is not merely a biological condition, it is also a state of mind. On that basis I am a pseudo human being at best. A demon at worst."

Wilson – who has had access to tapes in which Griffiths taunts and berates his former girlfriend, Kathy Bolton, who had a child with him – says the killer is a misogynist who has a narcissistic personality disorder.

"He is somebody who is a wannabe. He is desperately keen for fame, even infamy," Wilson says. "John George Haigh attended his school and Griffiths and all the boys at the school were told of the link with the serial killer."

Wilson says there is a sense of copycatting with Haigh, Peter Sutcliffe – the Yorkshire Ripper, who is also from Bradford – and the Ipswich killer of prostitutes, Steve Wright: "If a woman wanted to end a relationship with him, he would regard it as some kind of criticism that he couldn't accept." Wilson said Griffiths would always try to deflect blame on to his former partner – a psychological trick called neutralisation. When he talked about himself, he used very powerful language and was always domineering.

On the last tape, Griffiths laughs maniacally at his former partner, which Wilson says is "actually very chilling".

His favourite books on the Amazon website included Goodbye Lizzie Borden: The Story of the Trial of America's Most Famous Murderess, and Patterns of Vengeance: Crosscultural Homicide in the North American Fur Trade.

Wilson said it was clear Griffiths had read his book Hunting for Evil, about Steve Wright, and had adopted a similar modus operandi to Wright, immersing two of his victims in water to destroy DNA evidence. "I have never come across a case of a student of criminology wanting to become an offender," he added.

"Although there are unique aspects of this case, he also targeted groups of vulnerable women similar to Wright, Sutcliffe and Jack the Ripper."

Wilson believes that, like other serial killers, he was trying to influence the media narrative. "He would have been seriously upset when he was knocked off the front pages of newspapers by the Cumbrian mass killer Derrick Bird. He simply wanted his 15 minutes of fame that he felt he deserved."

Griffiths's every gesture appeared contrived. Following his arrest, he chose to be represented by the Bradford law firm Lumb & Macgill, who acted for Sutcliffe.

Few of the journalists or relatives who witnessed the killer's first appearance at Bradford magistrates' court would forget it. When asked for his name, he scratched his head and arrogantly declared: "The crossbow cannibal." The victims' families gasped as an official muttered: "Did he really say that?"

During a brief hearing at the crown court later the same day, there was no opportunity for further upset as the clerk asked if he was Stephen Shaun Griffiths. "I am," he replied.

A prostitute who knew Griffiths for years said she could not believe it was the same man. He was "like a brother", she said, adding that he had fed her, washed her clothes and took her in when she had nowhere else to go. A far cry from the "crossbow cannibal".